Ask anyone — the Sundance Film Festival award that really counts is the Audience Award, and yesterday’s (Saturday, 1.29) winner of that honor was Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow….right on. Another thing you can usually depend upon is that the Sundance jurors will give their dramatic competition Grand Jury prize to a film that a lot of people didn’t get or flat-out didn’t like. This was clearly the case when they give their big trophy to Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue, a romantic triangle drama set in Memphis. At least four times during the festival I was told in no uncertain terms that Blue is highly problematic, dislikable, tiresome, irritating, etc. A sharp industry watcher and good friend agrees with me that Blue had “no buzz” during the festival, and Hollywood Reporter critic Duane Byrge called it “a drab, minor-key melodrama.” I’m not saying the jurors are wackjobbers or off on their own cloud…but you can bet that some people are thinking this or wondering if this is the case. I’m speaking of actor John C. Reilly, director Chris Eyre (Skins, Smoke Signals), critic B. Ruby Rich, producer Christine Vacchon, and actress Vera Farmiga (Close to the Bone). Cheers, in any case, for Eugene Jerecki’s Why We Fight for taking the Grand Jury Prize in the American documentary category.
A few days ago Oscar handicapper Pete Hammond said in this column that if Martin Scorsese doesn’t win the Director’s Guild of America “outstanding directorial achievement” award for his direction of The Aviator, “all bets are off.” What he meant was, Scorsese’s chances of winning the Best Director Oscar will be strongly diminished. So I guess it’s fair to say that all bets are indeed off since Clint Eastwood has won this award for his direction of Million Dollar Baby. Congrats, also, to Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni for nabbing the DGA’s best Documentary award for The Story of the Weeping Camel.

“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...

The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner's Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg's tastiest and wickedest film -- intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...